Nearby Attractions

Heading into Houston for the 25th Annual Houston Art Car Parade Weekend and looking for other things to do while you're here? As the fourth largest city in the nation we have a plethora of activities to keep you busy during your stay. Check out a few of our top picks as you plan your weekend!

The Beer Can House is a folk art gallery/workshop consisting of more than 50,000 beer cans.

The story goes that John Milkovisch hated to throw anything away, and after years of drinking, both his attic and garage were bursting with empty beer cans. In 1968, he got the bright idea that the cans would make good house siding, and a folk art legend was born. Milkovisch didn't stop with the house. He blanketed the lawn with concrete blocks inlaid with bits of colorful glass. He drilled holes in the redwood fence, filling the spaces with marbles. With the cans’ pull-tabs, he created clinking curtains that he hung from the front porch and eaves. More beer cans, wire and found objects became mobiles and lawn art. Altogether, Milkovisch spent 18 years decorating.

The Orange Show Monument is a Houston postman's creation that extols the virtues of his favorite fruit. The outdoor 3,000-square-foot monument is maze-like in design and includes an oasis, a wishing well, a pond, a stage, a museum, a gift shop and several upper decks. It was built single-handedly from 1956 until its completion in 1979 by the late Jefferson Davis McKissack. It is constructed of concrete, brick, steel and found objects including gears, tiles, wagon wheels, mannequins, tractor seats and statuettes.

The monument encourages visitors of all ages to follow McKissack's theories relating health and longevity to good nutrition, hard work and eating oranges.

The Orange Show is one of the most important folk art environments in the United States.

The Art Car Museum is a private institution dedicated to contemporary art with an emphasis on art cars, other fine arts, and artists who are rarely, if ever, acknowledged by other cultural institutions.

The museum, or "Garage Mahal," as many people know it, features the most imaginative, elaborate, and artfully constructed art cars, low riders, and mobile contraptions, as well as art exhibitions by local, regional, and national artists. The conceptual origin of the museum was the 1984 Collision Show at Lawndale Art Center, which resulted in art car workshops around the city and, eventually, the Art Car Parade.

The museum showroom celebrates the spirit of this post-modern age of car culture, in which individuals have remolded the factory model sameness of their cars to the specifications of their own images and visions.

The Art Car Museum opened in February 1998. It was founded by artist Ann Harithas, a long-time supporter of the art car movement, and James Harithas, former director of the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Car artist David Best created the museum's distinctive scrap-metal and chrome exterior.